It's not about bacteria entering your bloodstream (if that happened you'd have bigger problems), its the inflammation caused by your body fighting the bacteria influencing other organs. Inflammation isn't an acute action, the signalling molecules involved travel around the entire body. This can cause inflammation in completely unrelated areas. The heart is highly susceptible to this since all your blood travels through it.

What about wounds caused by flossing irregularly?

Seriously, and flossing undoubtedly pushes some food particles beneath the gum line.

wut?

You sure it isn't that people who floss tend to also be people that take better care of their bodies overall, and hence the two, while correlated, aren't an example of cause and effect.

Ehm, I'll admit that at this time no causal link is established although there is a correlation [1]. I've come to realize that I don't have a good source for what I wrote earlier.

Sources like [2] do claim a causal link but I was unable to find the actualy study.

[1] http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=193088#qu... [2] http://abcnews.go.com/Health/dental-screenings-linked-lower-...

To be clear, I don't want to discount the studies completely, because there does seem to be a little bit of smoke there.

That said any real conclusions are clearly premature for the data, as science reporting tends to be these days.

Isn't that what the Lymphatic System is for? Bacteria do not simply enter the bloodstream, that would be a serious infection.